Let it make you better

Pain is something none of us can escape. It’s universal. No matter if you’re rich or poor. Pain will find you. If none of us can escape it, the question is how we react to it. This is especially important for married couples and families. Pain can drive us closer to farther apart. Pain can make us better, or it can make us bitter. It all depends on how we react.

This is something I feel strongly about. I know that we have hard things in our lives to help us grow. Growing up, I had a lot of anxiety. Anxiety about simple things like going to a sleep over or being in a new place. As I got older and realized how most of my peers didn’t experience anxiety, I felt so much shame. I felt like I was broken. I felt like I was less than my peers. I tried to burry my anxiety, to make it disappear by not feeling the very real anxious feelings. I didn’t tell anyone, and it grew worse and worse. Finally, one day I told my mom that I wanted therapy. She was so supportive, and I saw a therapist for my anxiety soon after I told her. I remember how I just cried that first time I met with my therapist. It felt so good to express all the thoughts that had been repressed for years and years. It was so healing. When I spoke my thoughts out loud, they lost some of their power and for the first time in my life, I was filled with hope in overcoming my anxiety. I started telling people that I had anxiety and sometimes I would need their support and understanding. No one thought less of me like I feared they would, instead they offered their love. I grew closer to my friends because I wasn’t hiding my pain. They could support me and that brought us closer together. 

Later in my life, I had so many opportunities to provide that support to others who were struggling. I could tell them that I understood some of their pain. Because I suffered, I could help others who were suffering. I could reassure loved ones that they weren’t alone in their pain. I was there for them in a way that I couldn’t be if I never had anxiety. This principle applies to all the hard thing I’ve had to go through, pain helps me to understand other people. We as humans aren’t just meant to grit our teeth and bear the pain, we’re supposed to learn something from it. We’re supposed to learn about what it means to be human. To me, a huge part of being human and taking pain and letting it make us better. Taking pain and letting make us a little kinder, and little more empathic. 

How does this relate to families? I think something that pain often makes us do is retreat. Like a sick dog or cat, we want to retreat to a corner and not come out until the pain is gone. But pain can bring us together. When I told my mom and friends about my anxiety it made us come closer together. When something painful happens in a marriage, it can be tempting to turn away from your spouse, but this is an opportunity to come closer together, to weather the storm together. When we go through hard things together, our relationship is so much stronger. Life is meant to be hard, but we are also meant to learn something from the hard. Relationships that endure pain together are much more likely to endure in general. 

So, when life gets hard, turn to those you love. Let it build your relationship, and then let it make you better.